Wednesday, November 7, 2012

When It Rains It Pours


To recapitulate: I've got on my needles three summer items - a cotton cardigan, a linen blouse and a cotton-viscose black dress, of which I do mean to finish the first two some (sunny) day.
I'm also deep into my winter knitting - a cardigan, a hat for my son and leg warmers and gloves for me.
So I really don't know what came into me yesterday, but I started a ... thing out of my cotton-acrylic yarn stash. It's a patchwork entrelac ... thing, which might become a blanket or a throw, or just a cushion, I'm not sure yet :)


But now I get it why quilts and patchwork items as a whole are so popular with crafters - creating this WIP square by square is totally addictive!
Here's the pattern if anyone is curious or likes it. I'm sure there is actually a written pattern somewhere, but I came up with my own, as I prefer purling to knitting and I wanted my garter stitch to be made only of purls (as opposed to only knits):


Cast on 35 stitches using backwards loop method and color 1.
Row 1 (RS): purl
Row 2 (WS): Change to color 2. Purl 16 sts, purl 3 tog, purl 16 sts
Row 3: purl
Row 4: Change to color 1. Purl 15 sts, purl 3 tog, purl 15 sts
Row 5: purl
Continue this way, purling 2 rows with each color and decreasing 2 stitches at the center until you've reduced the stitches to 3 stitches of color 1.
Row 33 (RS): purl 3 tog

I'm knitting on 3 mm needles and my squares are exactly 8 x 8 cm. I've got 550 g of different colors and the 9 square piece weighs 30 g. I'm still not sure whether to proceed as until now - without planning, adding each new square on a whim, or to make an effort to design the thing. We'll see ...

8 comments:

  1. This is so lovely! This can't be the new project you said wasn't turning out so well?

    I love that Cambridge Jacket too - made it for my hubby a few years ago!

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    1. Thank you, Gail! Actually I'm unhappy with my gloves. The original pattern is for fingerless gloves, to which I'm trying to add fingers, but the yarn is very thick and the glove is turning kind of ... rustic :)

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  2. OMGosh, those mitered squares are fantastic! Love the two toned.

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  3. This is going to look really great! It's such a good idea to use left-over yarn in this way.

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  4. Yes, lovely squares! Very interesting. Have a good week! Do svidania! Sabine.

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  5. Love the colours in the squares, and the way the mitred pattern creates chevrons. I really like it best on angle, the way you have it in your last photo :)

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  6. Lovely! Are you knitting them together or sewing them together?

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